A village in Kenya had a huge surprise this weekend – after a ‘stray lion’ emerged to be a carrier bag.
The bag had been innocently placed beneath among some bushes in the shade.
But a passing farm hand saw the big cat’s ‘face’ and feared an entire lion was hiding in the undergrowth and ready to pounce.
He quickly raised the alarm with authorities.
Three armed wildlife officers rushed to the village of Kinyana, a kilometre from the Mount Kenya National Park, to trap the creature.
They found nothing but a carrier bag, and discovered it had been placed in the bushes by a nearby homeowner.
She had avocado tree seedlings in the bag, and hadn’t wanted them to dry out in the sun, so placed them among the thick hedge branches.
Village chief Cyrus Mbijiwe told the BBC: ’We treated the incident with a lot of caution and seriousness.
‘We first ensured everyone was safe then wildlife officials investigated and discovered that it was a bag.’
Once the group realised the lion was in fact just a bag, they saw the funny side and started to snap pictures and pose for selfies.
The farmhand, who works for the homeowner, was still praised for ‘raising the alarm in order to mitigate a possible conflict.’
His employer had been away when he called the authorities.
When she returned, she was informed about the big cat sighting and urged to enter through a separate door.
Therefore, she didn’t immediately make the connection between where she had left her bag, bought from Carrefour, and where the wardens were standing.
A similarly anti-climatic big cat sighting took place last month in Oldham, Greater Manchester.
A concerned resident said they spotted a ‘tiger’ in a garden and rang the police in a panic.
But the fearsome beast emerged to be nothing more than a stuffed toy.
After their laughter subsided, officers decided to take in the toy and call him ‘Tony the Tiger’, after the cartoon advert for Kellogg’s Frosties.
